Post navigation

The Highs and Lows of the Advertising Age

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on their News Blog yesterday that the planned Ernie Davis statue at Syracuse University is suffering from an unfortunate case of anachronism:

The bronze sculpture, unveiled on the campus on Saturday, depicts Mr. Davis wearing Nike cleats and a jersey with a swoosh across his chest, the Associated Press reports. The problem? Mr. Davis hung up his cleats at Syracuse in 1961, years before the brand existed. The university said the mistakes were those of the sculptor, who also included a too-modern helmet.

Corrections are planned, but how exactly did this happen in the first place? All I had to do was search “Ernie Davis” on Google Images, and I not only found the above picture, but evidence of a period accurate portrait in the Syracuse AD’s office. Have we become that inured to Nike’s logos that we expect them to appear on any athletic uniform? Or was the sculptor just too lazy to do his research?

In happier advertising news, this week a new set of billboards went up on a building I pass on the way to work:

Click on the picture to see the full size image. Don't forget to peek at the far left edge.

First Nike put the Adrian Peterson ad in my subway station, and now Usain Bolt is on my way to work. Can I put in a request for a Chris Paul ad once the NBA starts? He does have his own shoes now.

Why look, there's an excuse for a Chris Paul pic in this post!

And finally, since we’re rapidly running out of baseball season, I should take this chance to recommend Sarah Bunting’s new blog project, Crazy Nines, which puts together such fantasy lineups as The Black and White team (players with Black or White in their names) and Chewiest Baseball Names, which according to the author’s criteria are

names 1) longer than ten letters, and names that sound like 2) a sneeze, 3) a curse word, 4) a novelty dance, 5) some sort of Transylvanian alcohol that isn’t legal in the States, or 6) a tiny cured or pickled fish.

The blog is still in its infancy, but as an extension of the baseball posts at her main blog, Tomato Nation, it’s a fun read, especially if you’re a baseball history buff.